The last time the state experienced a major freeze like this was a decade ago in 2011. At that time, too, natural gas generation experienced difficulties — had ERCOT not reduced load through the rolling blackouts implemented during that storm, it would have resulted in widespread blackouts throughout the entire region, a federal report on the storm warned.
It is possible to “winterize” natural gas power plants, natural gas production and wind turbines, experts said, which prevent such major interruptions in other states with more regular extreme winter weather. But even after upgrades were made following the 2011 winter storm, many Texas power generators have still not made all the investments necessary to prevent the sort of disruptions happening to the equipment, experts said.
ERCOT directors also said that the storm this week took a turn in the early morning hours of Monday, when extremely low temperatures forced many more generators offline than ERCOT had anticipated.
“It appeared that the winterization we were doing was working, but this weather was more extreme than (past storms),” Woodfin said. “The loss of generation during the morning of Monday, after midnight, was really the part that made this a more extreme event than we had planned.”
Upgrading equipment to withstand extremely low temperatures and other changes, such as providing incentives for customers to conserve power or upgrade to smart appliances, could help avoid disasters like this one, said Le Xie, a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University and assistant director of energy digitization at A&M’s Energy Institute.
“We used to not worry too much about such extreme cold weather in places like Texas, but we probably need to get ready for more in the future,” Xie said. With climate change, he said, “We’re going to have more extreme weather conditions throughout the country.”
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/natural-gas-power-storm/
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